


Dead Stop

by Deannie



Series: Cowboys and Zombies [8]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Gen, Horror, Old West Zombie AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 19:38:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6920302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Shoot for the heads and don’t let them near you.”</p><p>It’s not as dark as it seemed in the train, and I can see the crash looming in the shadows ahead of us, a fire from the engine lighting some of the area. The cars are all sort of everywhere, and I see something that might be a body… I take a deep breath as another cry screams out ahead of us. No time for being a scared little kid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Stop

My name is JD Dunne, and I am  _ not _ afraid of the stories I’ve heard about the West. For the first time in my life, I’m beholding to no one and I will find my own path, just like Ma would have wanted me to. I’m a grown man now, no matter what the folks at home think.

“I heard they come out at night and they eat you, brains and guts and all.”

Jimmy sounds earnest all right, but I know he’s full of crap. 

“There’s no such thing as dead bodies that walk around,” I tell him as the train rattles along toward Santa Fe, night falling around us. I left Boston five days ago and all this time riding the rails has made me tired. “Heck, my dime store novels make more sense than that!”

“It’s all because of the Indians,” the guy sitting in the facing seat says. He’s got black hair and dark eyes; tall and thin and even kind of sickly looking, actually. Pale. He got on at El Paso and has kind of been watching us—out of boredom, probably. I’m bored as heck myself—couldn’t swing the price of a Pullman car, so I’m going to have to sleep upright in this chair  _ again _ . I’ll take any distraction I can get.

“What do you mean?” Jimmy asks, his Chicago accent broad. I met him when we changed trains at Dearborn station there, and he’s nice. But pushy. “And how do you know, anyway?”

“Because,” the guy tells us, “I have a cousin in San Diego. That’s where it all started.”

That’s true, actually. They say the first cases of the dead rising were around there. If you believe in that sort of thing.

“An Indian squaw lived not far from the white man’s army base there.” His voice is kind of deep and ominous, dark brown eyes penetrating. “She fell in love with a corporal, but you know how it is with those Indians.” He shrugs. “Her people said she was betraying the tribe, and the corporal? Well his commanding officer said he’d bury him if he kept consorting with a savage.”

“Damn right,” Jimmy agrees. 

“I don’t know,” I say quietly. “Don’t seem like that should matter, should it?” They both look at me like I’m crazy. “The Indians up where I live don’t seem all that savage.”

“You got those Eastern Indians,” Jimmy corrects me. “They ain’t like the heathens out West. Those ones’ll skin you alive and laugh while they do it.”

The guy nods, but I’m not sure if he’s agreeing with Jimmy or with me. “Doesn’t matter what they’re like,” he continues. “They were in love. Really in love.” He shakes his head. “One day, they were meeting in the woods. They thought they were safe, but a few of the soldiers had followed him and they started beating him—beating them both.”

“They beat a  _ woman _ ?” I ask. Don’t seem like an army soldier ought to do that. 

“She was a savage,” Jimmy says, sounding like he knows what he’s talking about. 

“Don’t make it okay,” I tell him. The guy’s just waiting on us. “So what happened?” I ask.

“They killed him,” he said simply. I swallow hard at that. “Some of the braves in the tribe, they heard her screams, and came running. Killed the soldiers.” He shakes his head. “She was still alive though, and an angry Indian woman…? She cursed the soldiers’ bodies—made them walking dead, doomed to travel the world and eat of the flesh of their own, on account of they killed one of their own like that.”

Dang... 

Jimmy smacks me in the arm. “That’s why you can’t trust the Indians,” he tells me. Maybe he isn’t so nice, after all.

“The soldiers were the ones who started the killing,” I point out. Jimmy frowns and I realize I started a fight I didn’t mean to. I’m good at that, unfortunately.

The crazy old man a couple of rows up stands and stretches, heading our way to walk the length of the car and back a few times. He’s done it a few times since the last stop. Probably got bad knees like Old Mister Paxton back home. He’s been listening, it’s clear. “It’s probably the army’s fault in the first place.”

“Why are we slowing down?” the guy across from us asks suddenly. 

We are. As a matter of fact, it ain’t more than another five minutes and we’re at a dead stop. A conductor walks in from the car ahead of us just as we’re all starting to think about getting out and seeing what’s going on. He closes the door real quick and locks it.

“Please stay seated, ladies and gentlemen,” he tells us. He seems kind of nervous, looking out into the dark. “There’s a... little problem on the rails ahead. We have people checking it out. They’ll let us know if it’s safe to continue.”

“‘If?’” A fancy-dressed man in the front of the car stands up, looking upset. “I need to get to Santa Fe—it’s a time-sensitive matter. If we aren’t moving, I demand you let me out. I’ll walk to the next town and procure transport there.”

The conductor sort of blinks at the rudeness and swallows hard. “Marleville is about a mile and a half up the tracks, sir, but i don’t think you’ll be able to find any transport there.” He actually looks a little sick. “Their telegraph operator didn’t sign in when the rail manager plotted the trip. We’re not sure there’s anyone left alive.”

“It’s that damn Indian curse,” Jimmy whispers to me. I ain’t really listening. How does a whole town just… die?

“You’re joking surely,” the guy up front says. “Why, I’ll have your commission for—”   
  
“What’s the problem on the tracks?” Another man stands up, guns on both hips, with a hard look in his eyes. “We’d best know now before we gotta get out and walk.”

“You won’t have to walk, sir,” the conductor says earnestly. “We couldn’t let someone out here—it wouldn’t be safe.” He takes a deep breath. “The engineer and the railroad police are investigating an eastbound train that rammed into the crash bar on the emergency side ahead. Two of the passenger cars are blocking the main tracks.”

“So have the engineer  _ move _ them!” the rude guy demands. He needs to shut up. Something bad is going on here…

“Did anyone survive the crash?” the guy we been talking to asks quietly. 

“If they did,” the conductor says grimly, “they didn’t live long.”

“The  _ deyiape _ are out there, aren’t they?” a pregnant lady asks into the sudden silence. “The undead ones?” 

I can’t really believe this. I mean, all these stories about dead people walking around? They’re all made up, right? Something to make a sickness sound more exciting than it needs to be?

“We need to stay in the car,” the conductor answers—which ain’t an answer at all. “The engineer and—”

Gunfire erupts somewhere on the track ahead of us, and the conductor jerks in surprise. The sun is down. If the talk is more than just talk, the walking dead like nighttime the best. 

A blood-curdling scream breaks across the nervous silence and the man with the hard look and the guns steps forward. “We need to help them.”

He’s right. I stand up, reaching for my bag in the netting above. I got a pistol, and I been practicing since I was a kid.

“Sir, I was given very explicit instructions,” the conductor pleads. He’s a coward, I can see now. 

Another shriek comes in through the window and the man with the hard look glares down at the conductor from a foot away. “Unlock the door or give me the key,” he growls. “There’s a third option, but I guarantee you won’t like it.”

With a little whimper, the conductor unhooks a keyring from his jacket, holding it up by one of the keys. The man with the hard look takes the keys and turns to survey the whole car, and I realize I’m not the only person armed and on his feet. There’s about half a dozen of us.

“Shoot for the heads and don’t let them near you,” the man with the hard look says. He unlocks the side door and jumps down, covering us all as we climb out.

It’s not as dark as it seemed in the train, and I can see the crash looming in the shadows ahead of us, a fire from the engine lighting some of the area. The cars are all sort of everywhere, and I see something that might be a body… I take a deep breath as another cry screams out ahead of us. No time for being a scared little kid.

The man who led us all out here fires into the night and I see a body drop. Then there are… people. Things. God, I don’t know what they are, but they need to die. They’re milling around the wreckage and shambling toward us from farther down the track, too. I don’t hear screams ahead of us anymore... 

I start firing and I don’t stop. One of the undead things jerks hard as someone with a rifle hits one of its arms, but it just keeps coming, like it didn’t even feel it. I hit it in the forehead, though, and it drops dead on the ground.

“There’s too damn many of them!” someone cries. I think he might be right. If that train was as full as ours, there would have been fifty or sixty people in it. And then there’s what the conductor said about the town.

“Just keep firing,” the man with the hard look calls out, steady and calm. “Keep them away from our train and we can last the night.”

Rifle fire sounds from behind us and I whirl around, watching in horror as a whole other group of the monsters heads for the train. Where the heck did they come from?

“Damn it, fall back to the first car!” The command rings out and we’re all running, firing at the undead as we try to clear a path so we can get back in. “We’ll hold as long as we can.”

It’s full dark now. How long is as long as we can?

The five of us who are left clamber into the front car and slam the door, covered by three men with rifles stuck out of the top windows, firing on the undead.

“How many rifles we got?” our leader asks, looking out into the night as people fire from the windows.

“Not enough, Michaels,” one of the other men tells him grimly. 

“Ain’t an option, Tenn.” Michaels makes his lips a firm, resolute line, and I straighten up a little as I reload. 

“Option or no, we’re stuck,” Tenn says. He’s got a hard, cold look to him—harder than Michaels. Reckon maybe they were in the war together? Seems like it. “We can’t even be sure anyone’ll come looking any time soon.”

Michaels shakes his head. “No, they’ll come,” he says. “Probably already on their way. That train should have checked in when it made Tilstown to the east and the conductor said Marleville’s telegraph is silent.” 

“Can’t be the first train they’ve had to write off in all this,” Tenn replies. 

“They’re not writing off  _ that _ train.” Michaels sounds awful sure. “The doors are sturdy,” he tells us, raising his voice to be heard. “Long as we keep picking them off and don’t run out of ammo we can do this.”

And so we did. Tenn—Tennessee Oldman, from Minnesota—had a great idea to get as many people as we could in here with the guns, so we had people shooting undead off the space between the cars while we moved about twenty more passengers in here. The monsters are faster than I figured they’d be. And some of them seem pretty smart. A few climbed up on the car and tried to get in through the top hatches. They could climb, but they couldn’t figure out the handles, thank God.

It’s nearing morning now, and I ain’t heard a shuffle or a moan in an hour or so. Captain Michaels has been keeping everyone calm. He was in the war, like I thought—decorated soldier and everything.

I don’t know how many people we lost on the train, but I know I ain’t seen Jimmy or the guy in the facing seat. And there was that rude guy and the pregnant lady at the back of the car… Gosh, I think I’d throw up if the quarters weren’t so close in here.

A horn bugles somewhere in the gray light beyond the train car and Tenn, who’s standing guard at the front door, smiles big. “You’d best see this, Michaels,” he calls. 

Captain Michaels moves through all the people and gets to the window. He snorts. “About damn time.”

“Hey the train!” The call is strong and loud. “Hey the train! Colonel Lowell Mason of the United States Army. Anyone alive!?”

“Yes, sir, Colonel!” Michaels calls out. “Captain Michaels of the 106th infantry out of Fort Stockton. We count thirty-nine here!”

Dang. The train was near full—almost sixty people to start with…

“Held the night, did you, Captain?” the colonel calls, pride in his voice. “Well reinforcements are finally here. Reckon you could all stand to stretch your legs.”

_ The crazy old man a couple of rows up stands and stretches…  _  I ain’t seen him either.

Michaels grins at the rest of us, and I realize he’s all but asleep on his feet. “We could use some fresh air, sir. Yes, sir.” He motions to Tenn to open the door but exits first to make sure it’s safe. After a second, he ducks back in and I hear him whisper to Tenn, “Might want to keep the women and children inside until we can get a few closed wagons for them.”

I see why he said it when we get out. The ground is littered with bodies and parts of bodies. It’s like those photographs of battlefields I seen at the museum back home. Hell on Earth.

“COLONEL!” The panic in the soldier’s voice has me pulling my pistol and turning toward the car where I started my journey. There’s a soldier on the ground with a monster on his chest, tearing at his throat.

_ I heard they come out at night and they eat you, brains and guts and all. _

Dear God, it’s Jimmy.

“Someone must have been bit,” the colonel murmurs as his men run forward to gun down the dozen monsters that boil out of the passenger car. “It swept through them all as the night wore on. Probably what happened on that med train, too. Until there was no one left alive.”

The monsters are no match for the Army and I just stare, frozen, gorge rising. It was all stories. It wasn’t  _ real _ ! The pregnant lady is there, too, dead like the rest—

I bend over and empty my stomach finally, gagging and gagging and gagging until I feel a hand on my back. I look up and see Tenn watching me with what should be pity. Or maybe disgust. Heck, I really am just a stupid, scared little kid, ain’t I?

“Lost my lunch more than once on a battlefield, friend,” he tells me quietly. The compassion in his eyes is enough to have me standing straight, trying to regain myself. “Ain’t no shame in it.” He looks a little green himself. “Especially in this hell.”

“Still can’t believe it,” I mutter, throat thick with puke and horror. “I thought it was all talk when I left Boston.”

Tenn sighed. “Reckon maybe you should have stayed back East,” he says, clapping me on the back as I show I can stand up on my own. “You did good, though. Could have stayed safe in the train, but you came out and fought with us.”

I look at the newest pile of bodies on the ground. “Wasn’t so safe in the train, was it?”

He chuckles blackly. “I guess not. Maybe you were meant to survive. Meant for something better.” He rakes me with a look. “Army’s a good place to make a difference, Mr. Dunne.”

I shake my head. I ain’t a soldier. Hell, maybe I ain’t cut out for life in the West at all. Sure as hell not  _ this _ West.

“All I want to do is make it to the next town,” I whisper.

And then I’m holing up and staying put. Forever.

*******   
the end


End file.
